


Aqua

by onceuponachildhood



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Ableist Language, Alien Biology, Gen, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2640893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponachildhood/pseuds/onceuponachildhood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junior isn't the only thing Tucker gets from the Sangheili. Knowing how to be mean isn't the only thing Caboose gets from Omega. Washington isn't the only thing Blue Team gets from Freelancer, but he's there. They make do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. uno

Wash wakes up because it feels like he’s stopped breathing. It takes him a second to realize that he’d been unconsciously muffling his screams with his own pillow and that yes, he’d not been breathing. He pushes up on his arms - off his stomach, off the pillow. Air. He gulps air, letting the room come back into color. When he doesn’t feel like he’s underwater anymore, he rolls out of the bed. It’s uncoordinated and he feels like his legs have been replaced by jello, but he’s standing. There’ll be no more sleep, not if the nightmares might accidentally kill him, and so he pads out of his room on silent feet. There’s coffee in the makeshift base kitchen, he knows. Coffee and silence.

The kitchen is not silent. Caboose sits on a broken chair, cradling a glass in his hands. In the dim lighting, Wash can see the faint milk mustache over Caboose’s lip. “Hello Agent Washingtub.” He looks tired but cheerful, brown eyes wide as his smile.

“... hello, Caboose.” His voice is a little rough. Probably from the screaming. “What are you doing up?”

Caboose _deflates_. He hunches, almost like he’s curling himself around his cup. “Oh, you know, I had a dream.” His voice gets lower. “The kind where people are getting hurt and I cannot help them and everything is bad.” He looks back up at Wash. “Like you have.”

Wash blinks. “What…?”

Caboose’s eyes go wide again. “Oh, no. No no. You have been crying.” Wash reaches up, touches his wet cheeks. Caboose is up, moving, grabbing a cup from the cabinet and pouring something from the fridge.

A glass of milk is pressed into Wash’s hands. “Caboose,” he begins, soft. The gesture is sweet, but it stings all the same. “Milk isn’t going to-”

“Oh, well, yes. I know that milk cannot make the bad dreams go away. Silly Wash. The milk just sings a lullaby to your tummy.” There’s nothing Wash can say to argue, really. “Drink up. This is just part one of the super-special-awesome bad dream cure.”

Wash drinks the milk quickly, hopes it’ll settle in his stomach without trying to make a comeback. “What’s part two?”

Caboose drops the two empty glasses into the sink and grabs Wash’s hand. Caboose’s hand is big, and warm, and trembles a little bit in the dark. “That is where Tucker comes in,” Caboose explains, and Wash fights the urge to yank his hand back or plant his feet against Caboose’s insistent pull. “He is very good at making the bad dreams go away.”

“Uh, Caboose, I don’t think-”

But there’s Tucker’s door, and Caboose opens it and pulls Wash in without hesitating. His eyes adjusted to the dark, it’s easy to see the bed with the way the moonlight spills in the window. Wash is both proud and alarmed to see that Tucker already has a hand on his sword in preparation.

Tucker relaxes, setting the sword back on his bedside table. “Caboose, buddy.” He catches sight of Washington. “Wash?”

“Washington had a bad dream too, and I told him we could make it better.”

Tucker raises an eyebrow, Wash can see it, but he still reaches down to the floor for his pajama pants and tugs them on under his sheets. “Alright, yeah. Bad dreams. Come here.” Caboose bounces over to the bed. It’s strange and puppylike and Wash almost smiles. Caboose is quick to jump over Tucker, flopping down next to him and wiggling close. “No, Caboose-” there’s a bit of furious pushing “-get under the blanket, idiot-” and the sheets are moving. Wash feels cold. He feels like he’s intruding, and he’s about to turn and leave when Tucker mutters “slide over, you gotta leave room for Wash.”

“Right!” Caboose’s head pops up and he looks at Wash over Tucker’s shoulder. “Come on, Wash, before the milk stops singing!”

Tucker snorts, shaking his head, but he still tellingly pulls the sheets back so that the space in front of him is open in invitation. Wash blinks. “Are you sure…?”

“Just get over here before it’s time to get up, asshole.”

Wash walks over, steps unsteady for entirely different reasons than jello-legs. He debates which side to lay on before realizing he’ll need to face the door to get any sleep. He lays down, easy, and tries not to panic when Tucker very gently tugs him close. He can feel the warmth of Tucker’s chest through his thin sleep shirt. Caboose slings an arm over Tucker’s hip to rest on Wash’s, and he softly says “Nighty night, stupid Tucker. Nighty night, Washingtub.”

“Night Caboose.” Tucker’s breath is warm in his hair.

Wash finds it easier to reply “Goodnight” than he thought.

 

 


	2. dos

He sleeps so well and so soundly that Tucker is only half an hour behind him into the kitchen. He passes a coffee mug to Tucker without hesitation, and is relieved when Tucker makes his drink with no weirdness.

“So,” Wash says, “that happen often?” The casualness is so forced that even a bleary-eyed Tucker hears it, and he rolls his eyes at Wash.

“What, sleeping with Caboose?” He takes a sip of coffee, and Wash almost misses the clearly ignored opportunity for a bow-chicka-bow-wow. Almost. “Only sometimes. He’ll have nightmares in spells, usually. It’s been happening since O’Malley left his head.”

Wash doesn’t look at Tucker. “And, what, he just randomly started climbing into bed with you?”

“Well at the old base, I’d usually hear him crying and go out in the hallway to hug him until he fell asleep.” Tucker pauses, drinks his coffee. “I suggested the bed when it was clear that sleeping in the hallway was going to be a regular thing otherwise.”

Wash isn’t sure which question to ask next, so he goes with “And you’re okay with, uh…”

“With another teammate?” Tucker grins behind his cup. “Yeah, dude, you’re on Blue Team. We gotta stick together.” He puts the mug down, and his face gets more serious. “To be honest, with the shit you’ve probably seen I’d be more worried if you didn’t have nightmares. Makes you more fucking human, dude.”

Wash doesn’t want to look anymore. He’s only been up since 0600 and his whole world feels kinda weird. Unsteady. Not like a rug has been yanked out from under him, necessarily, but like someone else had come along and lifted him up, tried to put the rug back. Maybe not perfect and straight and neat, but at least back under him where it belongs. He swallows. “What about you? Don’t you have nightmares?”

Tucker laughs, short and bitter, but a tension Wash hadn’t even noticed forming leaks out of the conversation. “All the fucking time.” He leans back against the counter, sets his mug down. “Usually less when Caboose is there.” He lets a breath out between his teeth, and Wash thinks that’s going to be the end of it. Then, “Junior.”

“What?”

Tucker tips his head back and closes his eyes. Wash looks at the lashes laid out on his dark cheek. At the way the Sangheili tattoos at the base of his neck stretch with his skin. “Usually my nightmares are about Junior. I know he’s alive, I can- fuck, man, I can feel it. Like a sense. A little beacon in my head. But I don’t know who he’s with or where he is, and I know what kind of shit the Sangheili can do.” He opens his eyes, tilts his head to look Wash dead on. His eyes flash unsettlingly, go from liquid brown to neon aqua then back to brown in the space of a heartbeat. “I can do some of it myself, if I really want.” Tucker pushes off the cabinet, stretching and rolling his head. Wash can hear the cracking in his neck.

He turns to Wash, and even though he’s shorter it still feels like Tucker looms over him. He sincerely, desperately hopes it’s the eye thing and not some sort of weird residual effect of his oxygen-deprivation.

Tucker frowns. Maybe he notices the tenseness of Wash’s posture. “You okay, Wash?” His expression is nervous. Fragile. Wash feels like he’s looking in a weird mirror, after one of the bad nights.

He scoffs. “I’m just fine, Private. Get an MRE and get suited up. We start drills in twenty.” And with that, the normal team dynamic clicks back into place. He marches away to suit up himself with a lightheartedness he doesn’t expect.

Tucker looks at the clock and scowls. “Fuck you.”

 

 


	3. tres

A thud wakes Wash up, loud and sharp and accompanied with a cry out from Tucker. He’s up, pistol in hand, running toward the sound in the space between one breath and another. He gets there to see a strange sight. Caboose is stretched out across the bed, fingertips brushing against the wall. He’s frowning at Tucker. Tucker himself is on the floor, his expression twisted in what might be rage. “Caboose, I fucking swear-”

“But Tucker,” and now he’s smiling, smug, and it’s strange to see on Caboose’s face, “you said I had to touch the wall. I am touching the wall. It is not my fault that you cannot still be in the bed.”

Tucker closes his mouth. Opens it. Closes it again. Caboose and Wash wait for the outburst that is sure to come. Tucker doubles over, shaking, and Wash sets his pistol down on a crate before taking a step into the room. “Tucker…”

Tucker throws his head back, laughing. It rings out into the room. His laughter is warm and rich and occasionally cracks as he struggles to take a breath. It’s borderline hysterical. “Fuck, Caboose,” he manages between giggles. “I guess you’re right.”

“... Tucker?” Caboose rolls over to peer over the edge of the bed.

Tucker wipes his eyes. Wash can see the tears in the corners of his eyes. He can see the muscles pulled tight in Tucker’s shoulders. “Nothing, Caboose. Fucking shove over or get the hell out.” He pulls himself up using the bed as leverage, flops over onto a still-confused teammate. “Fine. Guess I’ll just sleep like this.”

“Tucker, no! You are sweaty and heavy.”

“You calling me fat?”

“Not fat. More weighing too much to lay on me.”

“Sounds like you’re calling me fat, dude.” Tucker’s smiling, now, and it looks more normal and less brittle. He wiggles just enough that he slides off Caboose.

Caboose shrugs and settles back down to sleep. Wash silently grabs his gun and makes his way back to his own room.

 

 


	4. quatro

Wash walks into the room to find Caboose propped up on his elbow, a hand tracing over Tucker’s back. Tucker himself has his eyes closed. His cheeks are tellingly wet. Caboose still looks up at Washington and whispers “Tucker had a bad dream. I am helping though. He said I do a good job.” Wash watches him for a while. He’s running his fingers over the Sangheili marks on Tucker’s back, Wash realizes.

“You do, buddy,” comes a soft reply. Tucker doesn’t open his eyes, but he still reaches for the sheets and pulls them back for Wash.

Wash lays down with his back to the door. It surprises Tucker, he can tell, as he gets a raised eyebrow in response. But Tucker doesn’t open his eyes, and they lay there in silence. Wash is concentrating on the here and now. The feeling of breath on his cheek, rhythmic and soft and unthreatening. It’s something he hasn’t felt in a long time, and he’s close to closing his eyes when Tucker opens his own.

The results are stunning.

Tucker’s irises appear to be bubbling. They flicker, liquid and smooth, between warm brown and piercing aqua. Wash watches. Wash holds his breath. Tucker notices the intense watching, the sudden shock on Wash’s face that escaped through the exhaustion. “Dude, you okay?”

Wash blinks. Caboose pauses. Tucker’s eyes settle back into decidedly brown territory.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine.”

“Really?” Tucker gives him a half-assed grin. His cheeks still look a little damp. “You were staring pretty hardcore at me. Not that I blame you,” he adds.

Wash doesn’t let any panic he might be feeling show through. “I was, uh, looking at your eyes. They’re… interesting.”

Tucker somehow manages to convey _you’re a piece of shit and I totally know why you’re freaking out_ through the power of a glare alone. Caboose doesn’t get the memo, though, and says “I like Tucker’s eyes too, Wash! They are very pretty. Like chocolate.”

“Ah, dude, you sound so fucking gay.” The look is gone. Tucker laughs. Wash wonders if he imagined the sudden understanding in Tucker’s expression. He knows he didn’t imagine the eyes.

Caboose lays back down and is asleep almost instantly. Wash closes his eyes, but he doesn’t fall asleep himself until Tucker’s breathing is as soft and natural as Caboose’s.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have always adored the headcanons of the alien biology messing with tucker's own dna. I also have some very firm headcanons as to tucker's brown eyes. this fic wasn't just about exploring those ideas, but that's what I focused on.


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